New to photography, which cam?

CrazeUK

CrazeUK

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CrazeUK
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Hi Guys.. and girls.
I am quite new to Digital SLR photography. Indeed i have never actually taken a photo with a Digital SLR camera.
I did previously use a Canon EOS300 35 mm camera, which has long since been gathering dust.

I have about £800 to spend on a DSL camera, so i have decided to buy a used but good condition DSLR camera.
A friend advised me i should look at a Nikon D5100 or a D7000 (which he has recently purchased).

I am quite happy with his advice however would like opinions on a few topics:
1. Canon vs Nikon vs Pentax.
I have read a number of articles on the 3, although not so much on Pentax.

From my understanding Nikon are great in that they have buttons for all the common settings as opposed to canon who hide them in menus.

Nikon are better built, and canon less so.

Canon lenses fit nikon cams, but not vice a versa.

Nikon Flash shoes are more secure than canon ones which easily slip out.

My question is .. is it all true and which would you reccomend?

2. On a DSLR does the shutter count really count?
I view shutter count as mileage for a car. The more miles the more worn the car, the lesser the value.
In the old days of 35mm cams i understand the issue but is this still the case with DSLR's as i presume the only moving part is the Mirror?

So at what shutter count should i not buy a DSLR?
Does shutter count matter?

3. Where to spend the money - Body or Lenses?
Another debate i have heard a lot about but am undecided is the Body or the camera.
I understand that some cameras have a greater number of pixels, some have full frame etc. But shouldi spend the money on the body or the lenses?

4. FUll frame or normal.
I am by no means pro in any way, and i doubt i will be using the camera as a pro camera (maybe at a wedding). But should i save up a bit more and hold out for a full frame camera like a D700 or just stick to a D7000?

5. Most importantly... Which Cam?
A friend has recently purchased a D7000, and highly reccomends it. Any others to take into account?

Thanks in advance for any discussion or advice!
 
Many question bit of research in the forums would have helped to clear or confuse you even more on some of those.

Start asking yourself questions like what you planning on shooting? What you enjoyed shooting with your film camera? Do you care about shooting video? Do you care about an optical viewfinder? Is weight/size an issue for you?

Depending on your answers above you can start include/exclude other makers/models to/from your list like Sony, and the m4/3 cameras from Olympus and Panasonic.

Once you have done this come back and get a few models as suggestion, go to a store and play with them, buy whichever feels better in your hands.

On your budget you will not get a D7000 as if you do then you have no money left for lenses so I'd skip it (it is a brilliant camera just bought one but would be no good without lens would it?) On the other hand £800 is a very healthy budget for a good s/h DSLR plus at least two decent lenses.

Money spent on lenses are almost always better spent than money on bodies. A good piece of glass will last you a long time, it will keep its value better and it will provide benefits that the body wouldn't both in IQ and in flexibility.

As a last point I am a Nikon guy but I would be very surprised if all those disadvantages of the Canon you listed are true at all.
 
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Your friend is a Nikon user so I'd take his Canon criticisms with a grain of salt. If Nikons were so superior everyone would
own one!

It's hard to buy a bad DSLR - they're all pretty good. That said, they do differ in their handling and menu systems etc, so personal reference is the major factor. Get down to a shop and try them out.

Oh, and you will struggle to find many 2nd hand D5100s as it's a very new model. Not many D7000s either. You might have more joy looking for a D5000, D90 or D300s, depending on your budget.
 
Hi guys, thanks for your input.
Before i insult my friend: He said t he differences where neither here nor there, he just prefered his nikon.

The stuff i found was on reading some blogs etc. Although for some reason most where Nikon users.

I was thinking if i looked for a used D7000 that would remian within my budget with a stock lens? I have been shopping online and new they seem to be around £900 with a kit lens. Which i wouldbe fine with for now.

As for what to take photos of.
Ideally i would need an all rounder.

Looking through my Adobe Lightroom collection, i have lots of pics on:
Landscapes, People, Festivals and animals.

I dont have many night shots, probably because Compacts are no use for them lol.

Thanks again.
 
CrazeUK said:
From my understanding Nikon are great in that they have buttons for all the common settings as opposed to canon who hide them in menus.
Click to expand...

nope. shutter and aperture are but a scroll wheel on your index finger and/or thumb away, likewise ISO control.

Nikon are better built, and canon less so.
Click to expand...

the magnesium chassis canon bodies are very well built, the 1D series are tank like.

Canon lenses fit nikon cams, but not vice a versa.
Click to expand...

no canon and nikon lenses do not fit each other (not without adapters).

Nikon Flash shoes are more secure than canon ones which easily slip out.
Click to expand...

never had an issue with 300D, 2x 20D's, 5Dmk2 or 1Dmk3.

2. On a DSLR does the shutter count really count?
Click to expand...

shutters have an attached average lifespan. being an average it could potentially fail on day 1 or 7-8 years down the line.

3. Where to spend the money - Body or Lenses?
Click to expand...

glass. great glass on a good body is better than good glass on a great body in my opinion.

4. FUll frame or normal.
Click to expand...

what are you shooting subject wise? you can get great photos out of both sensors though.

5. Most importantly... Which Cam?
Click to expand...

million dollar question.. get to a shop and have a play, decide which feels best to handle.
 
don't discount the Canon's, i went from a Nikon D90 to a Canon 550D and no regretted it
 
A d7000 with a 18-105 VR even s/h is still over £800 and the lens is no real match for the camera. At least I would be looking for a refurbished D7000 + a 17-50 Tamron which is an easy 900£ .

So I still think that a D90 + 17-50 Tamron and either a prime, a zoom or a wide angle depending on your style would be a much better investment.

But as I said before there are cameras like the A580 and SLT55 from Sony, the G3 from Panasonic and EPL2 from Olympus which might suit you better than a D7000.

Between them they have advantages like better video, smaller/lighter, built in VR which means you don't need much more expensive and much heavier VR enabled lenses and all of them are cheaper than the D7000.

I bought a D7000 cause I don't care about video and have a 1500£ on lenses which I didn't feel like selling. However I came close in buying a Sony or the new Pentax because of the IQ being similar/better to the D7000 and having built in VR which to me is a godsend as my hands are not that steady.
 
CrazeUK said:
Canon lenses fit nikon cams, but not vice a versa.

Nikon Flash shoes are more secure than canon ones which easily slip out.
...

I was thinking if i looked for a used D7000 that would remain within my budget with a stock lens? I have been shopping online and new they seem to be around £900 with a kit lens. Which i would be fine with for now.

As for what to take photos of.
Ideally i would need an all rounder.

Looking through my Adobe Lightroom collection, i have lots of pics on:
Landscapes, People, Festivals and animals.

I don't have many night shots, probably because Compacts are no use for them lol.
Click to expand...

Each camera manufacturer has a different way of attaching lenses - called the lens mount.

Canon is different to Nikon is different to Sony, etc.

In addition, manufactures sometimes change their lens mount, though this is infrequent.

Third party lens manufacturers make lenses in a variety of lens mounts, so you can buy a Sigma to fit on Nikon or the same lens but with a Canon (or Sony, etc) mount.

In addition, it is possible to buy mount adaptors, though these are mainly for attaching old manual focus lenses (M42) AFAIK.

The flash shoe for Canon and Nikon is the same basic design (it's the Sony / Minolta one that is different) so I'd be surprised if there was a difference in how secure a Nikon shoe was compared to Canon. Note that although the physical design of the connector is the same, the electrical signalling is different - you cannot use a Canon flash on a Nikon, AFAIK.

Lens vs Body - It depends on how you see your future spending. If you aim to gradually acquire more kit, then there is an argument to getting a higher quality body initially with a kit lens, then getting better lenses, then replacing the body, then more lenses, etc, as getting a cheaper body initially is only going to mean you have 2 lenses and a body to upgrade, rather than 1 lens to upgrade and 1 lens to buy.

The kit lens will be fine for initial landscape and portrait - depending on what you want may be a longer lens needed for festivals and animals (something like a 70-300 is a common starting point for a tele-zoom).
 
Wow loads to read and consider.
Well to hell with my misconceptions.
So starting from scratch.
But thats not a bad thing.. hobbies take time and one of the fun is the initial investigation work. :D

Thanks all so far with your input
 
He needs another 97+ posts and another 30 odd days before he can access that thread :) I am assuming by then the whole lot will be gone!
 
Oh darn forgot about rules.. oh well i will have to live with my newbie status for another month and 90 odd posts.

Its not a D7000 :( well i dont mind seen as i cant get to it!

but i'm the cat that got killed.. what is it?
 
now i drooling.. but i say there is a reason.. maybe i will find a used d7000 for like £200 in my dreams ofcourse but it makes me feel better
 
Canon 600D. £750 new with kit lens.

Cracking camera. Was going to get one myself as my first DSLR, but can now stretch to the D60 with 17-85mm IS USM.

And why Canon? I just prefer the feel of them in my hand to all the Nikons I handled (D5100, D90, D7000) and I suggest you do the same before spending your £'s. Go into a shop and handle the actual cameras (Jessops are good for this), you may hate the Nikons and love the Canons (or vice versa).
 
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Get yourself a cheap used 40D or D80 and that will be a massive improvement over cheapo film body. And that way you will have more headspace for future upgrades (you have been warned here!). Then put the rest to some sweet glass. As said before body without glass is not much good.

Finally, Canon layout is far better in my view, if we disregard any xxxD. I stress this is a personal preference.
 
Ok Guys so i looked at a number of cams in Jessops.
The sales staff where very helpful, even though he sold the Nikons more (he did say its his personal prefernce).

Anyways after playing with a few cameras i Decided i did prefer the Nikons (probably because most of the people i know have been going on about how the sun shines out of there view finders).

I finally narrowed it down to the D7000 (primarily because its the one i could afford new if i bought it from jessops).
Also i did like the feel, weight and functionality of it.

The other i considered was the D300S. But it was more expensive and looked more complex to use.
 
You seem to be finding out answers to most of your questions, but just one minor point:

CrazeUK said:
Canon lenses fit nikon cams, but not vice a versa....
Click to expand...
The opposite is closer to the truth as far as I know. You can get adapters for Nikon lenses to work on Canon bodies, but I've never seen the opposite - Canon lenses have a shorter flange distance, so even if you could find an adapter it wouldn't focus to infinity.


As for the D7000, it seems a nice camera but Jessops' website has that camera at £100 over your budget just for the body. If I had £800, I'd think about putting just over £300 of it on the body and the remaining £500 on glass - that would mean buying a second hand body, which isn't a problem as there's lots of people upgrading their cameras at the drop of a hat and leaving behind a good enough camera body.
 
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You could get a Sony a580 (same sensor as the D7000) for a little more than half the price.
 
I chose nikon over canon purely because I have fat fingers and when I held the two in jessops, there seemed to be more room for fingers between the body and the lens when you hold it. It therefore felt better to hold for me.
In my very humble opinion, it's all about how it feels to you.

I used to be a drummer and there was a saying that great symbols on a bad drum kit created a better sound that bad symbols on a good drum kit. The same principal applies in photography with glass and body!
 
If £800 is going to be your budget long term then I'd really listen to those saying save money for the lenses, they'll have a bigger impact on the quality and kinds of pics you can take than the camera will.

The main thing you need to ask yourself is what kind of pics do you want to take? people indoors? landscapes? wildlife? macro? a bit of everything?

As far as the body goes again things like the usefulness megapixels depend greatly on what you want to use it for, if its just going to be on a PC screen and small prints with little cropping then 12 may well be enough, if you want to make big A2 size prints or crop alot then get as many as you can.
 
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CrazeUK said:
The other i considered was the D300S. But it was more expensive and looked more complex to use.
Click to expand...

Hmm? really?


Anyways both are excellent cameras. Did you ask about interest free credit on the cameras (if you are going new) ?
Last time Jessops did that as long as you clear within a year and pay a 25ukp admin... You can always deposit a moderate chunk, plus get a decent lens too... Just a thought.

Did you handle the other brands including sony, samsung, olympus and pentax?


I find the menus confusing on canon - but then the d90 or smaller got me a bit too - not logical lol

Your choice on camera, but if your mates have a nikon and you carefully consider your lenses you can swap/share/borrow the lenses between you.


I am a nikon man and I like 'em. D300(s) is a wicked camera and will easily see you through 5 years - poss more. Loads of options to customise/tweak and you still have some beginner Program modes (I think).

Lens wise...
On the crop check out the 35mm f1.8 nikon (170ukp in jessops online) or sigmas 30mm f1.4 (check the af tho).
Wide angle I recommend the tokina 11-16 f2.8. But best to try others...
Macro I have the nikkor 105mm but have heard good things about the tamron 90mm or sigma 105/150mm
After that I'm at a loss - sorry. Would say the 50-500 sigma is lovely but big n heavy... Other lenses would depend on what you shoot. Have heard some good things on the tamron 17-50...
 
If you really want Nikon i would say buy a second hand D90 for £400, then grab a tamron 17-50 f2.8, second hand 35mm or 50mm f1.8D or a 35mm f1.8G, then if still have money grab yourself a 55-200 f4-5.6 VR zoom lens.

That should last you a good while and still within budget .....
 
Hey guys, not got around to buying a cam as yet. After getting together 1k i ended up spending it on an emergency.

Anyway, i know lenses can cost a lot.
But how much would a decent set of starter lenses cost?

I would like a 28-200 or something, and something to take wedding photos? (a very close friends wedding is coming up)
 
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